Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he will give the City's Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC) more than $2 million to increase adoptions and improve shelter facilities. The move comes one week after animal advocates filed a petition with City Hall to scrap the controversial agency and replace it with a new agency. Advocates charge the CACC with killing more than 40,000 animals a year which end up in the city-run shelters.

[It should also be noted that of the $2 million promised by the mayor, $1.5 million had already been allocated for building improvements the prior year and not released until the '97 Democratic primary day; the remaining money restores the $220,000 cut from the CACC budget by the mayor in 1996, making the net gain $280,000 -- not $2 million as the mayor's press office would have primary voters believe.]